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Carole Blair and Thelma Margulies
Cletis Tatum
Tonya Hall
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Carole Blair and Thelma Margulies teach at the Northern Berkshire Adult Basic Education Program in North Adams, Massachusetts. They have collaborated on several online writing projects.
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Thelma Margulies
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"The Great American Road Trip," Carole and Thelma's six-week
online writing curriculum, takes distance learners on the
virtual vacation of their dreams. The project syllabus is
posted on the program's website (developed and maintained
by Carole), creating a home base for the student-travelers.
Each weekly journal assignment is supported by activities
on writing skills (as well as one on map reading) drawn from
TV411 In Print and by a selection of internet
resources that help students plan their imaginary itineraries and
hit the cyberspace highway. From the project site, students can
link directly to web resources and download activity sheets, articles,
and reading comprehension questions to a floppy disk.
In week 1, students fill out a trip-planning sheet with questions about
destinations, transportation, and packing lists. The accompanying TV411
lesson (issue 14) provides practice using the compass, scale, and other
parts of a map. In weeks 2-4, students keep a travel diary, illustrated
with photographs collected from the internet. To give structure to the
writing process, Carole and Thelma created a worksheet for each diary
entry, which asks students to answer the five Ws—who, what, where, when,
and why. TV411 lessons on grammar, the five Ws, writing with specificity,
and using an editing checklist help students practice the mechanics of
writing, and in weeks 5 and 6, help them turn their diary entries into
polished stories.
The web resources culled by Carole and Thelma reflect their sense of humor
and adventure and appreciation for literature and the cultural importance
of the road trip in America. Students read excerpts from travel narratives
and visit sites that feature tourist destinations, ranging from the tried
and true, such as national parks and historical monuments, to the offbeat
and quirky, including the world's biggest cat, a 500-pound fiberglass
roadside attraction in New Jersey. This journey through cyberspace, the
writing process, and American geography enables students to hone their
writing, research, and computer skills while enjoying a virtual summer
vacation.
Click here to learn more about the project. To read the class memory book, click here.
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